


Scars

by intaglionyx



Category: Final Fantasy IX
Genre: Bodyguard Romance, F/F, Gen, Pre-Relationship, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-11
Updated: 2013-07-11
Packaged: 2017-12-19 03:07:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/878701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intaglionyx/pseuds/intaglionyx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Beatrix engages in metaphor, thinks more than she probably should about the respective naked bodies of her first and second queens, and does her job well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lassarina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lassarina/gifts).



> For the prompt:
> 
> "Garnet and Beatrix. I'm always fascinated by the intricacies of their relationship, how they reconcile Beatrix's service to Garnet with what she did while she served under Brahne. Loyalty is one of my serious pings, and I'd love to see that explored here. Gen or shippy is fine; either makes me happy. If you go the shippy route, though, please treat Steiner and Zidane respectfully."

Following this new queen is like following the path of least resistance. Beatrix feels as though she has spent the last decade of her life swimming against the current, or against gravity; she could never bring herself to say it, but her last years of service to Brahne were like swimming up a waterfall at times. 

She considers the metaphor as she stands beside the throne with a palm loose on her blade’s pommel. The interregnum, as short as it was, felt like falling, falling past all of her old misdeeds back down to the river below, and she is so very glad to feel pride that she truly deserves once again. 

Garnet signs a single document and sets to work an army of reconstruction to make the city what it was once again, with a sizable portion reserved to offer to states whose cities Beatrix was personally responsible for sacking. Beatrix bears her own scars, if none so sizable as those Garnet is so set on healing in her city and in her nation’s neighbors: a lost eye and no small amount of difficulty smiling is nothing compared to the death she so willingly wrought. 

Her queen retires to her chambers, and Beatrix follows, leaning against a wall as Garnet bares quite a few of her own scars while redressing for the rest of the day’s activities. Beatrix eyes a white line from throat to breast, a pale, ragged scar that stretches from shoulder to elbow and halfway down her forearm before ending as narrow and sharp as a dagger’s edge. There are more on her chest, two on her left thigh, and a disquieting not-quite-circle of post-scar skin tissue, pale as moonlight, the marks of a healer’s touch — in all likelihood, her own. Beatrix wonders at them all, thinks of her first queen’s skin, without flaw save for clustered freckles and the stretch marks hidden to all eyes but her own and the king’s. Brahne had been tested by politics, a harsh pregnancy, and a sorrow that had bled the joy and love out of her as surely as the direst wound, but her daughter has been tested by her own trials, and while Beatrix knows when her bias affects her judgment, she cannot help but respect one who has seen so much combat: as much fighting as she has in all her years of soldiering, compressed into only weeks.

Her queen leads, and Beatrix follows, through long-familiar corridors and out the gates to the city proper, where Garnet’s ragged citizens flow and bustle in chaotic lines between ramshackle shops and inns and factories. It is, to Beatrix’s eye, beautiful and harrowing at once, like a grievous wound only partly healed. Half the city is still black with soot. Garnet passes through streets and alleyways, looking at everything and speaking to everyone, and gives names for the librarian who accompanies them both to write down in their ledger: names of streets, names of citizens, names of people missing or lost to be collected, consolidated, and eventually memorialized. Much as Beatrix looked at her royal charge’s scars, Garnet is cataloging the scars inflicted upon her city and her people. Neither of them can undo the circumstances that wrought those scars, but Garnet, at least, is capable of doing something to heal them. 

Beatrix feels a mix of jealousy, admiration, and dedication thrumming in her veins along with her lifeblood. She keeps a hand on her pommel and her eye on her liege, and continues to serve.


End file.
